1983 Holden VH Commodore

My VH Commodore has been in our family on and off for 22 of its 32 years. I say on and off because during this time I’ve sold it and bought it back twice! I purchased the car when it was around 18 months old in late 1984. I got it from a bloke at work who hadn’t looked after it very well and he’d paid over $14,000 for it. I snagged it for about half that.

It was a special order model with SL/E extras and colour-coded bumpers, grille and door handles and I drove it for 10 years and put over 400,000km on it before selling it to my son Brett, who’s a mechanic. It was resprayed in the original iridescent Rhone green 15 years ago and it was in pretty good nick when I sold it to him. Brett kept it for six years.

It originally came with the 4.2-litre V8 and a four-speed but Brett installed a 308 with a Stage 3 cam, Rochester Quadrajet carby, a five-speed Supra gearbox and a limited-slip Walkinshaw Commodore diff. Then he sold it to a mate who had it for 10 years and spent another $16,000 on it but he treated it a bit rough, so I did the decent thing and bought it back!

My son couldn’t believe it and threatened to sell it but I told him he’s going to inherit it. He loves working on it but gee, he drives it hard.